What I’ve Learned This Summer: Ant Sims

The 2011/2012 summer of cricket is quickly drawing to a close, and in years to come, we’ll look back with sepia-tinged goggles and reminisce fondly about Pup’s three-hundred, KP’s return to form, and Doug Bracewell’s spell at Hobart. At The Sledge, we get nostalgic about things very quickly; as such, we’ve asked some of the brightest cricket writers from around the world to put together pieces on What They’ve Learned This Summer.

Everything is better when England are losing.

Sure it was all fun and games to point and laugh at India when they got knocked off their high horse and thumped by the Poms, but thing really are better when the English are on the receiving end of an ass whipping. It’s especially good when their ‘best player of spin’ can’t really play spin. Want the cricket world to climax in unison? Get England to lose.

In fact, it’s highly possible that world peace would one day stem from the English cricket team being utterly shit and the world laughing so hard at them that they forget to be angry at each other.

Fast bowlers are irresistible.

Sure, a Kumar Sangakkara cover drive is a thing of beauty. So much beauty, in fact, that you can show footage of him cover driving to your missus and totally skip foreplay, but fast bowlers, when rhythmically running in at full tilt, swinging their arm over with ritualistic precision as the ball darts out of their hand and sends the furniture of the batsman rattling – that’s something so beautiful, if van Gogh was still alive, he’d say that’s what his paintings would look like in motion.

Chris Gayle is boss.

If the WICB had any sense in their heads whatsoever, they would realize that Gayle is the greatest they’ve ever let get away. In fact, Gayle could open the batting from both ends and still do better than the current West Indies team. His placement is better than Hollywood’s elite plastic surgeons and his timing better than the script of a cheese RomCom where guy meets girl in unusual circumstances and they live together happily ever after. His shots are the kind of shots you want to take home to your mum and she would be so happy, she would drive you down to the church and throw a strop for you two to get married immediately. Chris Gayle deserves his own cult.

Ant Sims is a nunchuck-wielding Chris Gayle-adoring South African, who has two modes: “blogging” and “tweeting.” She blends insanity and hilarity into one sassy package.